Apple is set to announce that it has acquired Quattro Wireless for $275 million, several sources confirmed.

With their 100 000 apps and the rising importance of mobile business revenue this makes obvious sense. It follows closely Google’s recent acquisition of AdMob the prize of the fledgling mobile advertising industry a Quattro competitor, which Apple had also made a bid to acquire.

Both ad networks were aimed at the fast-growing market to advertise on smartphones, such as Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android devices and the plethora of other and new platforms (read Bada).

Waltham, Mass.-based Quattro has raised close to $30 million from two main venture investors–Highland Capital Partners and Globespan Capital Partners. Founded several years ago, its clients include Ford, Disney and the National Football League.

Competitor mobile networks in the space are still numerous, despite these big acquisitions, such as Millennial Media and Jumptap, both of which are now clearly in play for acquisition.

by Mark Jaffe   www.mobilemandala.com

There was a lot of passionate response to the post a few weeks ago “Will Mobile Phones Replace In-Store Retail Salespeople”. Even more reason that these three announcements this week caught my eye:

■  The Aberdeen Group published a report that stated in 2008, the total of digital signage market revenue stood at $766 million and is expected to reach $2.2 billion by 2014, growing at a healthy CAGR of 20%.
■  The London Daily Mirror reported according to unnamed sources that Nokia is planning to begin rolling out embedded NFC (near field communications) kits into its entire line of Symbian phones beginning Q3, 2010. The Finnish giant already has NFC in selected handsets, such as the 6216 Classic.
■  Malaysian manufacturer Fonelabs will produce two million low cost (under $100) NFC enabled phones in 2010
What do these three items have to do with retail? First, just as a refresher, Near Field Communication (NFC) is “a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology which enables the exchange of data between devices over about a 10 centimeter (around 4 inches) distance.” In other words, if you have an NFC enabled phone and opt-in, your mobile phone will be able to communicate with another proximate electronic device automatically.

Yes there is a new entrant in the app space and even in the OS space. Joining Android, iPhone, Windows, Palm’s WebOS, Blackberry, Maemo and not to forget Symbian… Samsung wades into the battle of the OSs. To get a good share in the mobile market Samsung has launched it’s own Linux based mobile OS named “Bada” which means Ocean in Korean.

Professing to be a totally open platform or OS Samsung says that it enables a richer user experience in applications on Samsung ONLY mobile devices and helps developers to create UI rich applications very easily. Samsung says that the design principles of bada aim to deliver simple, intuitive, and innovative user experiences through innovative visual design. Samsung bada includes a next generation UI framework with feature sets and design elements that facilitate leading-edge user interfaces for every bada application.

5 months ago Android announced that the had 10 000 apps. Now AndroidLib declares that they have reached 20 000 apps on the Android Market.These numbers are of course exciting as it would mean that Android has reached the level of Windows Mobile and passed OSs such as Symbian or BlackBerry. And in a very short space of time.

Of those apps about 60% are free apps.

by Mark Jaffe

Mobile phones have to be one of the best on the spot, at the moment, information retrieval resources of all time.  How many times have you seen disagreements settled immediately, courtesy of a quick iPhone web research query?  Well, it looks like some companies are ready to capitalize upon our penchant for instant research about things that interest us.

Let’s flash back to a recent industry panel where a senior Best Buy executive said “The right information at the point of impulse increases desired consumer’s behavior, sales, profits and customer satisfaction.” That sure sounds like a description of one of Best Buy’s best in-store salespeople helping out customers standing next to the latest electronic gizmo in one of their stores. 

Google has just launched real-time search integrated into search results pages.  Google (Google) real-time search updates as stuff is happening around the Web — for example, live tweets, Yahoo Answers, news articles and Web pages now stream in on the actual result pages for your query. It works on mobile too (at least iPhone) and Android (Android) for now). Here’s a video demo from Google:

Courtesy of Brian J. Friedman

BeMob’s and Tekora, ground breaking start ups in the mobile internet sector have decided to sell their social networking activities so as to concentrate on their main activities. They decided to regroup their social networks as a bundle but can be sold seperately if need be

Overview of the the social networks for sale :
The leading social network in France and growing world wide :

• 2 Mobile micro blogging services including : text, photos, videos, podcast…
• Dating service, largest mobile site directory in the world and customizable personal start page
• Optimized as a webapp on all types of mobile devices
• 10 millions de pages views per month (50% in France)
• 5 K euros of ad revenue monthly (non optimized)
• White label platform optimized for brands who wish to create a mobile social networking tool
• Growth obtained purely via viral means

Included in sale :

• Source code properly documented
• Tech hand over
• Chandover of contracts and ad revenue

Documentation:
If you are interested please feel free to download the PDF document which goes more in depth.
Presentation : bundle_igloo-MobitypeSales-proposal.pdf
Portfolio : 20091130_bundle_portfolio

Contact : bundle@texom.com

www.asiamobileawards.com

InMobi is nominated for GSMA Asia Mobile Awards 2009, which will be presented at the forthcoming Mobile Asia Congress, Asia’s leading mobile communications event that is set to take place at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Hong Kong, November 18th & 19th. InMobi was nominated in the category of Best Mobile Advertising & Marketing.

The aim of the Best Mobile Advertising or Marketing award is to recognize Asian leadership, and showcase ‘hot’ campaigns that are driving the emergence of this new sector.

Nominees for the Asia Mobile Awards are

http://www.admob.com/google

Yes finally it has happened… we have speculated for years exactly when would Google munch AdMob. I guess that they held out till the right time… the $750 million time.

I am personally very excited to see this finally happening. Having worked with AdMob for several years it is great to see a good idea and great execution paying off in the mobile arena. AdMob have really set up a great business and are pleasant to work with. So for me it is a great news to see them joining with Google who has really made forays into the mobile sphere with Android over the past year or two.

Watch a demonstration of applications from the Apple App Store built using Flash technology:

Flash Professional CS5 will enable you to build applications for iPhone and iPod touch using ActionScript 3. These applications can be delivered to iPhone and iPod touch users through the Apple App Store.*

A public beta of Flash Professional CS5 with prerelease support for building applications for iPhone is planned for later this year. Sign up to be notified when the beta starts.

Learn more in http://www.adobe.com/iphone/

Courtesy of Brian J. Friedman